


didn't forget

by guttersvoice



Category: Gintama
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Marching Band AU, technically, the rest of the joui4 are there but im not tagging them bc theyre barely mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 17:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8254457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guttersvoice/pseuds/guttersvoice
Summary: happy birthday again, gintoki





	

**Author's Note:**

> god idk its gintokis birthday so i wrote sth short about that set in the marching band au me and ren have been developing  
> we're not even american we just got carried away joking about uni aus always being very america-centric and thought we'd make our own as a joke and now im invested...  
> gintoki mostly just carries shit for the band, his foster dad shouyou is the faculty supervisor or whatever. hes also a lit teacher and a poet.. the important thing is their house is a hell of paper and books and swords and instruments

“Gintoki.”

The knocking at the door wakes him up, but he groans and pulls his Botan pillow over his head. He doesn’t have to do anything till the afternoon, and none of his alarms have gone, so no one has any right to drag him from the sanctuary of his bed so early.

He’s guessing its early. Morning sunlight tends to hit his window directly, and light is creeping in through the edges of his curtains, so he’s probably right about that, but he’s not about to discount the possibility that the world has rearranged itself around him in his sleep. It hasn’t happened yet, but who knows, right?

More knocking.

“Gintoki!”

He doesn’t have any classes today either, what the fuck is he doing up before noon?

Maybe there’s a fire, Gintoki thinks, absently reaching off the side of his bed for a handful of mixed Skittles and M&Ms from the bowl on his chest of drawers. He rolls over to shove them into his mouth and scratch his balls, face still half-covered by a half-dressed anime girl, and groans wordlessly but loud enough to let anyone outside his room know he’s awake.

“I’m coming in, Gintoki,” Shouyou says about half a second after the sound of the door opening.

“Shouldn’t you be hungover, old man?”

He’s still got a mouthful of chocolate and peanut and fruit candy, so he’s a little garbled through his chewing, but he’s pretty sure his meaning gets across okay.

“Hair of the dog,” his teacher-dad responds cheerily, pulling the body pillow off Gintoki’s face. How a man can wear a flowery silk robe over a brightly-patterned kaftan and still look both happy and elegant is beyond Gintoki’s knowledge, but Shouyou manages to pull it off, somehow. There’s a bottle of whisky in his right hand, which would not be a surprise if it were open, but this one looks sealed still.

More important is what’s in his other hand. Or, more sort of balanced on his forearm, wobbling a little every time he moves.

It’s a tall cake, heavily decorated with icing and cream and strawberries, and what looks like far too many candles stuck haphazardly into the top, all ablaze.

“Happy birthday, Gintoki,” Shouyou says, voice as soft and sweet as ever. It’s cold outside Gintoki’s blankets, but he feels warm.

He rubs at his eyes, more out of discomfort at the light than confusion. Some of Shouyou’s hair falls loose from the messy bun he’s keeping up with at least three pens, and swings a little too close to the fire.

Gintoki sits up and removes his birthday cake from the danger zone.

He’d forgotten, and had expected his - housemate? adoptive father? fellow trauma survivor? pet alcoholic? - to have forgotten too.

The cake is just from the corner shop, but the toppings were added after, and are neater than he’d expect on a normal day. Possibly all his focus had gone into the careful decoration work, with no poems being scribbled down at the same time, and no books or articles being read. IT’s hard to imagine, but that smile makes him believe it.

Shouyou pulls two glasses out of his wide sleeves, and sits cross-legged on Gintoki’s bed to pour them each a drink. Gintoki blows out his candles.

“What did you wish for?”

He takes the glass of whisky and plucks a strawberry off the cake, and shrugs.

“Nothing,” Gintoki says, and it’s a lie, but that’s ok. If he tells anyone, it won’t come true. “So am I supposed to eat this with my hands, or should I grab a sword off the landing to cut it?”

It’s a jab at Shouyou - both his organisational skills and the number of real actual swords that tend to just be laying around the house at any given time - but he gets a wider smile in response instead of crinkled eyebrows, which means that despite the lack of jangling there’s probably a whole cutlery set hidden up his sleeves, too.

There isn’t. The cutlery is downstairs in the living room with all of his friends, who arranged to come over with presents weeks ago, apparently. Once he’s pulled on pants and stumbled downstairs, they greet him with varying degrees of affection (from a flying tackle to a tut at his Doraemon pyjamas) and demand he share his cake with them (he refuses, and is eventually persuaded to allow them small slices, so long as his share is the largest), and each hand him a present (except Katsura, whose present is, of course, the dreaded slam poem).

It’s the best birthday he’s had in a while, and Gintoki finds his smile stays genuine and present throughout the entire day.

\--

Somewhere else, some time else, separate entirely from all this, another Gintoki, the same and different, is wrestling with a dog and a girl and a young man, and feeling just as loved and wanted and welcome, and forgets to grieve or hate himself for a bit. That’s nice, too.


End file.
